DC(undercover)

Little did I know that the title of this blog would be a realistic reference to DC as a place. I thought I was being rather cute when assuming I would author an unnoticed, undercover-like personal blog about quirky things in DC, when in reality it was more like an unknown news journalist naively stating the facts without any knowledge of doing so.

DC is a place where you find yourself, more often than not, under cover. Whether it's dashing from shaded sidewalk to awning-covered entrance, or splashing through reflective puddles of rainwater beneath the wished-for-protection of an umbrella, DC is a place where under is better.

And if under is better, "under the weather" says it all. Whether sneezing from the local allergies brought on by a higher than normal pollen count or coughing from some germ that managed to send the entire office to bed in waves of feverish misery, living in DC is also synonymous with "under the weather".

Chilling goosebumps that follow your every movement until the dampness in your hems and shoes finally dries in the late afternoon of a long day. Humidity in both cold and hot temperature extremes. Dripping trees that offer less than optimum protection from the rain. Gray clouds that quietly roll in to wrap themselves around you and the tall gray buildings around you in their insidious attempt to claim your soul. And of course, what DC is best known for, the strange bed partners in power plays and immoral relationships who spend time undercover under covers in DC.

And DC really could claim your soul. It wouldn't be the first time it's happened. Power and lust and egos reign in this place. They reign and it rains.

Damp basement parking garages built under the office buildings above. Long trench coats flapping around your calves and transforming your smooth, professional appearance to one of someone under cover as you splash through the muggy gray.

DC is not my favorite city, of that I am sure. And I don't think that will change. I have a lot to learn and see and experience in this area filled with history, cloaked with mystery and filled with people, things and places that might be best left undercover,and I am excited to get on with it.

Truth be known, and this is a recently discovered affinity of mine, but I love sloshing through the streets of DC in my trench coat and galoshes. I like being undercover, to be one of the thousands on DC sidewalks that appear to be sleuthing along the sidewalks.

That being said, right now, I really do want to be undercover. Under covers that  is. Clean sheets and layers of quilts. Warm, dry, safe, calm. No busy streets or trench coat or damp socks. Or tall gray buildings. Just dry warmth. And quiet.

Under covers in DC. Or DC(undercover).

There's really not much difference when you think about it.

Then again, there really is.

Catching Up

I was born late. My Mom never let me forget that. Due at the end of August, delivered on September 18th. My first human interaction on earth and someone was waiting for me.

Figures. And nothing much has changed. I am still typically running late and playing catch up.

Like here, on my blog. It's been nearly a month since I last posted. How in the world could I catch up on everything that's happened? There's simply no way.

So the best I can do, the best I have ever done, is to make certain that once I have arrived (and I'm here now) I do the best I can.

I actually hate being late, but it must be in my genes because no matter how many hours I add to prep time, I am still late. Predictably late. Perennially late. Sadly, late.

And so, to catch up on my DC ramblings a bit. DC continues to be a place I am not quite sure about. It's grey. It's busy. There's something about it that I hate and love at the same time. The furious movement, the powerful decisions, the historical everything.

I've actually been out of the area more than in, but when I am here I do manage to get around a bit. I have visited several restaurants and will rave or rant about them here sooner or (later). You guess which.

And even now, as I am typing, I am going to be late to a meeting if I don't get offline and get going.

So, bye bye for now. Not a whole lot to say right now and it's time to be late for another important date!

Ta Ta!

Drunken Noodles and Pomegranates

The Titanic sunk. The noodles were drunk. And pomegranate juice is everywhere. Disaster X3.

But Thai Tanic, the restaurant, was not a disaster. It was delightful.

Tonight we enjoyed Thai cuisine at the original Thai Tanic location at Logan Circle. The service was prompt, the ambiance very pleasant, and the food very good.

I enjoyed Drunken Noodles, one of my favorite Thai dishes, and Thai Tanic's version (which included some lightly grilled tomato wedges on top of the noodles) was delicious. The portion was large and if I wasn't heading off to the west coast tomorrow morning, I would have taken the remaining 1/2 portion with me. As it was, I was happily satisfied. My dining companions enjoyed shrimp, asparagus and mushrooms in a light red chile sauce, and pad thai (which he proclaimed the best in the DC area of the restaurants where he's sampled Pad Thai).

But as wonderful as the food and ambiance might have been, the best part of the evening was the company. Dining with friends is pretty close to heaven - oddly, a topic of our dinner conversation (but that's another blog entry).

Adedayo Thomas, the pied piper of liberty in Africa (as I like to call him), joined me and my Atlas colleague, Pechwaz Faizulla, for dinner on the at Thai Tanic. Two amazing and brilliant gentlemen, and me. How lucky am I?

Peshwaz is the editor of Chiraiazadi.org, the Kurdish website and the managing editor of Cheragheazadi.org, the Persian website. Prior to beginning this work, he was managing editor of Hawlati, the highest circulation newspaper in northern Iraq, and on the editorial board of the independent news agency, Voices of Iraq. He received his BA in English from Suliemany University, and his MS in Journalism from Columbia University in New York. Little did I know that Peshwaz is also a YouTube cooking instructor, specializing in opening a pomegranate in this video! Although, I shouldn't be surprised, he is a chef in his own right (I have sampled his cooking and he could open his very own restaurant if he wasn't so dedicated to liberty!)

Adedayo is an affiliate of AfricanLiberty.org as well as its publisher. Adedayo is affiliated with the Free Africa Foundation and IMANI Center for Policy and Education based in Ghana. Through the activities of Africanliberty.org, Adedayo promotes libertarian ideas in the core Islamic institutions of northern Nigerian states. I met Adedayo 2 years ago at the Atlas TTMBA training in Virginia. He was as amazing then as now. This morning he was our guest speaker for Atlas's Liberty Cafe and shared the experiences of being a troubadour for liberty throughout the African continent. What an amazing leader of liberty he is.

And then there's me. A redheaded grandma ;).  Like I said. How lucky am I? Very lucky.

Try Thai Tanic, I think you will be very pleased with what you find, but I can't guarantee your dinner companions to be as entertaining as mine. I'll leave that to you.

Bon appetit. (And good luck with your next pomegranate!)

God BECKons

He was here. Not God, well not in person anyway. But Beck was definitely here. He commandeered DC in a way not seen for decades.

I didn't go. I am not wild about crowds, or heat, or evangelical gatherings. But I did watch. And I was surprisingly moved. I am not a Glenn Beck fan. His TV personality is more than I want to deal with. And after yesterday it's obvious he is not an orator, but I was still impressed.

The crowd was mesmerized. The ministers of all faiths never unlocked arms. Beck challenged us to bring God back into our lives, and our families, and our communities, and our country. His message gave me chills.

He's right. We need to be more about love and those God-given principles that give humans an edge over animals. We need to exemplify what's good and fair and right. All things "virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy."

It's been said that the Elders of Israel will be instrumental in saving the Constitution when it is all but destroyed, when it 'hangs by a thread'. But before they can save it, they need to understand it. Before they can understand it, they need to want to. 

Beck (and others) felt a need to light a fire and stir our curiosity to study the Constitution, to know it, to believe it, to trust it. To trust God's divine role in its origin; to believe that he established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom he raised up unto that very purpose.

Beck (and others) felt they needed to remind those who are fighting for liberty that theirs is a great calling, to help them recognize in humility the great challenge ahead. 

You never know when God will beckon. Yesterday he was waving madly.

Twinkle, Twinkle

My Dad called me Twinkle when I was born. Oh sure, Jean Elizabeth was my real name, but he called me Twinkle for the first few years of my life - he told me that I had a twinkle in my eye way back then.

For nearly a decade I have had a small sign in both my office and my home that reads, "We can't all be shining examples, but we can all twinkle a little," but it was today that I saw the connection between my little sign and the nickname my Dad gave me. I was pretty tickled, to be honest.

Tonight I took a walk through Courthouse, it was a beautiful night. I was returning to my condo when a quick blink (or twinkle) caught my eye - possibly similar to that special moment when my Dad looked into my newborn eyes. It's almost the end of lightening bug season, in fact, it is the end. I haven't seen one for nearly a week, but tonight there was one remaining twinkle as I walked home. One last sparkle before the delightful sight of twinkling lights hovering just above the grass disappears for another year.

And as I looked to the skies there were stars, twinkling in the sky. One here, one there, and then another, and another. Twinkling, then fading out, then twinkling again.

DC was twinkling tonight, at my feet and above my head. I'm sure it won't be the last time. I continue to be surprisingly enchanted in this world of business suits, cement, traffic, power and titles.

My Dad was onto something, all those years ago before I knew anything about this busy world of DC. He knew that just like the lightening bugs near the grass and the stars in our night sky, I can't be a shining example all the time, but true to my Dad's nickname for me, I hope to always twinkle a little.

Don't we all?

24

24.

A simple number.

A multiple of 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 24.

Two even numbers, side-by-side. Nothing odd about 24 at all.

What do you think of when you see "24"?

The award winning TV show?

24 Hour Fitness, where you sweat off pounds and inches? 

How many hours you have until this time tomorrow?

Two dozen? Eggs? Donuts?

The number 24 will have significant meaning for me forever.

At this moment the number 24 means only one thing to me.

It's the number of stairs to my condo.

The number of stairs I climbed up and then down and then up and then down dozens of times during my frantic unpacking - breaking down boxes - hauling to the curb marathon over the past 4 24-hour periods (days). I am exhausted!

I may be old. I may need to lose 24 pounds, or more. I may have hit 24 twice, plus a few more years. But I am determined, I am stubborn, I am strong, I really AM exhausted. But I did it.

24 stairs. Probably 24 times. In 24 hours.

Not bad for an almost 24 + 24+ 24(1/3) year old.

Not bad at all.

Offensive Driving Techniques 101

Do you remember the phrase, "if you want to soar with the eagles, don't hang with the turkeys?". No? Well, I do. And there are a lot of turkeys on the streets of DC, so soaring with eagles seems to be a bit out of range.

And speaking of eagles, the 1970's driver's ed labs at Eisenhower High, home of the Eagles, were high tech and extremely advanced, so much so that we were written up for having the most user-friendly and technically advanced teaching stations in the southern California driver's ed world. It was a proud moment when I slid my size 5 jeans onto the seat behind the wheel of that simulator. I can still remember the thrill, and fear, as I placed my hands at 2 and 10, sat up straight and waited for the lights to flash green. NASCAR had nothing on me.

Of course, speed wasn't an issue since we were in a stationary simulated driving environment, but I still felt the wind in my long wavy auburn locks....oh wait, this isn't a dating site. Let me get back to the issue at hand. Soaring with eagles, wasn't it? Anyway...

Defensive driving was stressed in every clip of the semester-long video taped course, and restated in person by the driver's ed instructor on a daily basis for those 4+ months of intense days in THE SIMULATOR. (think the Governator's voice).

But with all of the technology, repetition, simulated driving situations and even on-the-road, behind-the-wheel driving, no one every mentioned offensive driving - the most widely used driving technique in the DC area.

So here I am, the product of a recognized-for-innovative-excellence driver's education program, but clearly missing the learned skills of offensive driving. Thankfully, when driving the streets of DC,  instincts prevail and the desire to live overcomes any learned skills or formerly held belief that courtesy is paramount on the highways. An almost zealous need for speed takes over as focus is narrowed and determination kicks in.

My independent nature has kept me behind the wheel of a car since the day I arrived, in spite of the very efficient (and easy) Metro system that gets you wherever you want to go for just pennies. However, over the past few weeks, my will-to-live has run rough-shod over my independence. And thank heavens for that. There have been too many close calls with taxi cabs, pedestrians, bicyclists, parking meters, one-way streets (yes, I've turned into one so far) and congested traffic in general.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I may have turned into a one-way street going the wrong way, but I have also mastered the technique of cutting in front of cars, easing my way into a lane that is crammed bumper-to-bumper with commuters, pretending to not care that the speed of traffic is an average of 5 MPH, built up muscle to carry pounds of quarters at all times for the parking meters, and mastered successfully parallel parking in a space even my first bike wouldn't fit in. I can do all of this, it's just whether or not I want to. Turkey, or eagle, that is the question. Join the turkeys or soar with the eagles.

The ability to drive on the offense, while remaining acutely aware of other drivers and being defensive, is a quickly learned skill and I believe I've mastered it, which means I am still alive, still driving, but much more inclined to return to the simulator-like safety of the Metro than stay on the crazed-driver infested roads of DC and NoVa.

So, the Metro will see a bit more of me, even if my hair won't be blowing casually in the wind (except as the train approaches). But on those occasions when I do choose to drive, I will think of THE SIMULATOR fondly and sing our Alma Mater with a new found pride, because even if I am stuck on the ground with turkey's, in my mind I will always be an Eisenhower Eagle in size 5 jeans.

And that's that. Survival of the fittest. Avoid turkeys.

Be strong, be bold, be offensive. Be an Eagle!

And...I'LL BE BACK. (think the Governator's voice).